The students of Encinal High School had the chance to tour C-SPAN’s award-winning state-of-the-art, 45-foot customized bus Wednesday, April 24, after school. The cable news organization has been touring the nation, visiting schools and performing interviews in all 50 states. That’s right, even Hawaii, which the bus reached with some help from a giant barge. 

The bus most recently visited schools in San Ramon, Oakland, Palo Alto, and was headed next to Sacramento. Since 1993, a C-SPAN Bus has traveled across the nation in partnership with C-SPAN’s cable and satellite providers for local interactions through visits to schools and community events. 

The students and few adults who visited the bus engaged with the crew and the onboard interactive tools to learn about the unique public service television network, C-SPAN’s online presence and C-SPAN classroom’s comprehensive educational resources. The bus visitors learned about C-SPAN’s unique non-commercial, editorially balanced, non-biased coverage of public affairs and political events and the cable industry’s commitment to funding its operations.

Both sides of the bus are lined with interactive panels loaded with software designed to inform the public, including several quizzes on political topics. I scored a 7 out of 10 on my “Presidents” quiz, while one of the students scored 10 out of 10 on two consecutive quizzes, earning himself some C-SPAN schwag. 

The hostess for the tour, C-SPAN’s Jenae Green, 27, shared that her parents reminded her that she had been born in former Navy housing in Alameda, and lived in town until age 4. Green helped everyone get the most out of their experiences, including having one student pose as a television newscaster reporting from the fully equipped studio inside the bus. 

C-SPAN, a public affairs network providing Americans with unfiltered access to congressional proceedings, was created in 1979 as a public service by the cable television industry and is now wholly funded through fees paid by cable and satellite companies that provide C-SPAN programming. 

Learn more about C-SPAN at www.c-span.org/about/faq.